Tuesday, April 23 marks the opening of another critical public hearing at the CRTC. It will be considering applications to expand the mandatory distribution of channels on the basic TV service. The outcome will tell us a great deal about how far CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais will go to protect...

Anyone who's ever spent more than 5 minutes reading my blog knows I've spilt a phenomenal amount of ink over the miserable state of broadband in Canada. In addition to some of the world's highest prices, we put up with unacceptably slow speeds, lousy...

I've been gathering reactions to last week's CRTC decisions on wholesale rates for Internet access. My takeaway is a lot of people are having trouble understanding what the hell it all means. For example, calling the new billing model "straightforward" is hardly how I'd describe the CRTC's capacity-...

Piracy is a lot like religion and politics. It tends to polarize opinion and get in the way of finding common ground for thoughtful discussion. That's the pattern we've seen in Voltage Pictures' demand for information from TekSavvy about putative pirating of their movies. Clashes between the studio and the...

After weeks of getting bashed in the blogosphere, TekSavvy emerged from the hearing on Monday in the Federal Court with a big bright check-mark against the privacy problem, CIPPIC's involvement, the mapping of IPs against human beings, and the what-have-you-done-for-us-lately problem.

Let's summarize the issues that have framed the debate...

Heading down to court Monday morning, I was concerned I might be late to get a seat for the Voltage hearing. I had my iPhone ready to record protestors and general ruckus. But Guy Fawkes was a no-show. I arrived to find the courtroom eerily quiet and half-empty.

What has...

"This is the first in a series of steps that will enable us to recover some of the losses we've incurred in the Canadian market. For a studio of our size, the losses we experience from piracy have a real effect. It means...

[Disclaimers: 1. I'd love to be replying to readers who've sent comments, but some gremlin in the HP servers is getting in the way. The techs are working on it. 2. I've been asked if my flattering comments about TekSavvy reflect some quid pro quo, financial or otherwise. Nope. I...

Back in the summer of...

Our broadband future may not be a wasteland after all

Last week, I sat down to talk shop with three TekSavvy execs who are breathing new life into the indie ISP sector. At the table were Marc Gaudrault, co-founder and CEO; Tina Furlan, Director of Communications & Marketing; and Pierre...

I think the CRTC's decision to get the incumbents' financials out of the closet is very positive -- another demonstration of Chairman Blais' public-spirited philosophy. But even Chairman Blais has a corporate history to live with,...

"It really boils down to this. How can we compete if we don't have cost-based input prices!? When incumbents have retail rates that are lower than the CRTC-approved costs and foreign investors run for the hills, you know something smells! We need real cost-based...

CRTC watchers eat crow. Don't you hate it when the world changes faster than you can write about it? Thursday's triumph over Bell is wonderful for consumers; for the thesis I was developing here, not so much. The comments I've read all indicate the Astral decision shows Chairman Blais really...